Maternal Mental Health

In 2017, 13.5% of WIC mothers reported experiencing depressive symptoms, which include feeling down, depressed or hopeless, or having little interest or pleasure in doing things. Participants were classified as having depressive symptoms based on a point score >=4 depending on how frequently they experienced the symptom measures. For example, a participant classified as having depressive symptoms could either experience all symptoms for “several days” in the past two weeks, or one symptom “nearly every day”.

Notably, Asian have the highest prevalence of depressive symptoms, followed closely by African-American and Spanish-speaking Hispanic women. This statistic has changed from 2014 as Spanish-speaking Hispanic women had the highest prevalence.